Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Fifty-Six

He knew why the bottle was there.

Why he told himself it was there.

Not in case of an emergency, because there would be no emergency until, and unless, he uncapped the bottle.

Jesse told himself he kept it there as a reminder that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t hide from your own boozing.

Or run from it.

So here was the whiskey he told everybody he didn’t keep in the house. They told you in AA about people, places, things. But this bottle, it was the thing. The whole ballgame. He could hold the bottle up, the way he was now, the way Crow had held his glass up at the Scupper, and look at the amber liquid, and see through it all the way to the bad old days.

He couldn’t remember how long ago he’d bought the bottle. A couple years ago? Back when the world was still in lockdown because of COVID, definitely, when the days and weeks and months ran together. Two hundred dollars for the good stuff. Better than he used to drink when he was still drinking.

What he always told himself, and told the bottle, was this:

You don’t scare me anymore.

The hell it didn’t.

The bottle was still sealed. It didn’t matter, the way it hadn’t mattered with Crow’s drink. Jesse could taste it, and could smell it. Sensory memory.

On high alert.

He put the bottle down on the middle of his desk blotter and leaned back in his chair and stared at it.

It never mattered why he took it out, even if it had been a while since he had taken it out.

There it was, anyway, right in front of him.

He reached over and did hold it up now, in the light of the antique desk lamp that Sunny had bought for him at a shop in the Vineyard one time. The feel of the bottle in his right hand as familiar as if he were holding a baseball, or had both his hands on a bat.

He could hear the sound of his own breathing.

It was then that he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket, loud in the quiet of the moment.

Jesse put the bottle back down, and took out his phone, and looked at the screen.

Let go, they also told you in AA, let God.

“You need to get over here,” she said. “Please hurry.”

“Are you all right, Emma?”

“Yes and no,” she said.